I feel as though a good way to implement NPCs--in regard to ones that try to emulate players--is for them to simply be passive ships; no pirating, policing, or mercenary NPCs. NPCs could be more of an aesthetic filler, spawning idly and moving from point to point, perhaps having some defensive capabilities but never to go on the offensive.
I suppose the issue that could arise from this is if you destroy one, would you be allowed to extract resources from them in the form of pirating cargo or salvaging hulls. This could make for semi-interesting gameplay, but could also just become a way people farm for quick resources instead of fighting other players for them or gathering them independently.
I feel in the end it comes to how many players are able to be in one shard/server, and how often they're online. If there's an abundance of players constantly having the opportunity to bump into each other, then I see no reason to have ship or character NPCs; but if it takes a good hour before you might have even the opportunity to intentionally find another player, then I think it'd be good to implement some filler here and there to make the world seem less lonely.

I mean maybe, but depending on how big the DU devs make planets, the resources to simply do so would be ridiculous. Plus, with the current idea central hubs beacons and surrounding claim beacons would be just as easy to hack as the other, its just a matter of how many resources an org/player puts in to defenses. Thus the central hub should have the most defenses, not because of any surrounding tiles beacons, but rather because thats where the most turrets are.

Well this got way more responses than I expected; Soooo, it seems like I should have specified in my idea that the central hub is intended to be extremely costly, it's not something an org can just place down over and over again at the same price. With each central hub an org or group places down, the next will rise exponentially in cost; so yes maybe late game after DU has been running for a couple years, its possible orgs could take over an entire planet in a few moments by this, but in the beginning the resources just to place subsequent central hubs should cost too much for entire planets to be claimed in minutes or hours. This could even be mitigated in the future by taking into account the total central hubs an org owns across multiple planets, so that mega orgs will continue to feel the loss of resources even say 5 years from now when they've built up their empire.
Also, with this idea they would still need to claim every tile on it to gain "total control'. I don't believe anywhere in my post I said they would gain control over an entire planet simply by claiming parts of it. If you look at the visual representation the central hubs are indicated in dark pink, and the lighter pink the surrounding areas that an org has taken control of, all other remaining hexes that aren't colored represent tiles any other org or player could claim.

So from the previous videos DU Devs have posted it appears that the current system of claiming will be on hexagonal tiles and dependent on territory units--which are to be expensive. My idea is that what if the system worked like this:
A claim possess one central beacon/territory unit which is extremely resource heavy but still feasible, with it you can build on adjacent tiles less expensive territory units; the catch would be that to build more adjacent territory units you must upgrade the central unit--which cannot be done indefinitely. Secondly, if a central unit is hacked/destroyed/sold/captured then all sub-sectors will be destroyed/captured, this would then support the construction of cities around central units as you'll need to prioritize their protection, and since you cannot expand forever with one central beacon you will need to construct more to continue expanding, which in turn means more cities. Take this example:
Here you can see three central hubs. One has been fully upgraded and thus a second has been placed to continue expansion. With this model future central units do not have to be adjacent to continue expansion, which in turn allows for multiple cities/colonies around a planet. The only stipulation with this is that it gives the opportunity for organizations to quickly take over planets by constructing multiple central units at different sides of a planet; to mitigate this there could be a limit of central units on one planet, or that the price of a central unit increases based on how many a player/organization already owns on said planet.
What do you guys think?